


Devil, Cease Not

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Series: Through a Glass Darkly [2]
Category: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Amorality, Biblical References, Canon-Typical Pseudoscience, Character Study, F/F, Faustian like whoa, Female Harry Potter, Female Voldemort, Frankenmort, Horror, Period-Typical Sexism, Unreliable Narrator, dub-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-02-11 06:45:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12929730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: "Her eyes... Why were they crimson? Her features had a serpentine cast I hadn't noticed before... Her mouth opened, and a low, dreadful moan emerged. In short, she was hideous, an anathema, horrific to look upon. ... What had I done?"There is a scientist. There is a creature. Who is the monster, who makes whom?





	1. I: The Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is exactly what it looks like: Harrymort femslash written as an homage to _Frankenstein_. This was a pain in the ass to write, but also fun as hell. It's likely not an easy read. And there are likely inconsistencies that I just have no idea how to fix... Sorry about that. :-( If none of that puts you off, then I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Title derived from this: “Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I have declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath words. Leave me; I am inexorable.”  
> Like the epigraphs, also taken from _Frankenstein_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: a murder followed by a scalping and description of corpses.

With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. – Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_

I

My name is Abigail Potter.

I sit here, removed from civilization by both choice and necessity. By all accounts, I should rue my conception, wish to God that my existence never was. And yet...

I do not.

Despite everything that has happened—despite all the things I have done—all the deaths for which I am responsible, I do not.

Perhaps I should feel some measure of guilt at this declaration, but again... 

I do not.

I am, then, what I was always meant to be. But what is that, you may rightly wonder?

I am...

But we'll, ah, come back to that in time.

I do not know when first the desire to create life came to me. No, I do not refer to the childbearing to which natural, biological life forms are prone. My own mother died in childbirth, and my father followed a few years later from complications brought on by overindulgence in mind-numbing intoxicants meant to help him forget his wife's premature death. So, as you see, childbearing is messy and potentially fatal to all involved parties. What I refer to instead is the act of building a being with one's own hand, of designing every aspect: From the precise placement of each internal organ to every microscopic detail of the outward appearance. This method always seemed a far cry more interesting than copulation, with its need for other people who wish for things you yourself may not.

(I admit, both sexual intercourse between a man and woman and the birthing process disgust me, but this is irrelevant to the events of my tale.)

A family took me in after my father's passing. Arthur and Molly Weasley met my father days before he died, saw what a state he was in, and offered to take me if anything were to happen. He grudgingly consented, and then peacefully expired. Likely he was holding out for someone to take me off his hands, poor man. The Weasleys wanted a second daughter to add to their seven children—a single daughter and six sons—as a playmate for their youngest child. The transition was jarring for a lonely girl such as I. 

My most vivid memory was the entire family's horrific shade of red hair. I had been living with them for only a couple months when I first thought that it would be far better to choose the shade of hair one's child had, instead of relying on the unpredictability of genetics. Their particular shade of red, I felt, should not be inflicted on anyone. My own hair was a lustrous black, though impossible to tame. And while hair is a miniscule trait and its color affects nothing of an individual's personality, I wished for more control over my progeny.

Yet there was still more to my desire. I wished, I suppose, to be a god, equal in power and knowledge to whatever being—or biological processes, I don't care which—brought about the existence of life on earth. I didn't want such powers for myself alone. Humanity was in desperate need for someone to save it from itself.

My childhood was a happy one. I joined in on the games of Ronald (lanky and defensive and terrified of spiders) and Ginny (fiery and impulsive and a lover of cats) and the twins (brilliant and playful and inclined toward inventing), and what games they were. We played enjoyable tricks upon each other and our—that is, their—parents. We made up worlds of magic and mystery. I have never been so content than during our frolicking. There was, however, some unbridgeable gap between me and my siblings. I found joy in the written word, whereas they only tolerated reading as far as lessons were concerned. And my titanic ambitions put even the three oldest—the academically inclined Bill, Charlie, and Percy—to shame.

I was twelve when I ran across a collection of dog-eared natural philosophy books that had been abandoned in the bowels of the Ottery St. Catchpole—our village—lending library. I read them all feverishly, again and again. My adoptive father, Arthur—a man of immense intelligence and logic—cautioned me many times, protesting, "natural philosophy and alchemy are, well, not scientific, and ought to be put back where you found them." But by this time, I was far too absorbed to take heed of any sage advice offered.

From all of this, it would be understandable to presume I was at heart a bitter child: An aloof outsider among a tightly-knit clan. But this could not have been further from the truth. Ronald was the same age as I, and we spent hours playing in the fields. The twins—two years our senior—joined me occasionally when I embarked upon small experiments with galvanism, interested though they were for very different reasons than I was. And lastly, there was Ginevra, the only daughter. She was a year my junior, and adored me: Following me about, joining me to make dolls out of any materials we could find. In addition, a girl named Hermione Granger, who lived nearby but had no siblings, would often join in our fun; she and I became quite close as the years passed.

When I was eighteen, I entered university—an all-male institution, as was the way of most universities at that time—through various deceptions and exceptional intellect, helped along through Hermione's scheming (she would have joined me but ultimately decided her future career as a novelist would not be helped along by attending). For my purposes, I ceased to be Abigail Potter and became Harry Evans (Evans being my mother's maiden name), a poor orphan boy who won a generous scholarship. The head of the university, an eccentric old man named Albus Dumbledore, welcomed me cordially. "Well, Evans," he said kindly, his unusually vivid blue eyes studying me closely over the tops of a pair of half-moon spectacles perched precariously upon his nose, "what courses of study do you wish to pursue?"

"I've read the works of the alchemists, sir," I replied. His eyes twinkled for the briefest of moments, before dimming.

"Laudable," he said, "but an ultimately disappointing route—I meandered down that winding road myself, years ago. Might I recommend something more useful?"

"If you wish, sir."

"Politics, my dear boy. Tried and true and applicable anywhere."

I rather doubted that. I attempted—and failed—to keep the skepticism from my face.

"Oh, I'm not convincing you?" Dumbledore asked merrily. "Professor Flamel and his assistant Professor Snape will take good care of you, then." I was handed a preliminary course schedule and a key to the generously-provided lodgings that came with my scholarship.

My next order of business was to pay a visit to Professor Flamel himself. He was younger than I expected—younger than Dumbledore by at least a decade or two. He was going gray at the temples, and his scrutiny equaled Dumbledore's for sheer intensity. I fidgeted uncomfortably.

"There is more in heaven and earth than dreamt by our philosophers," Flamel said with a nod to the generously-apportioned bookshelves behind him as I finished outlining my background. "Attend my lectures and Professor Snape's demonstrations and you are welcome to do as you please in your spare time."

"Thank you, sir," I replied earnestly.

Flamel didn't exaggerate: I had every opportunity I could have hoped for. I set up a laboratory in the spare room of my lodgings and gathered materials as I studied my fascinating course work, though it was somewhat limited in scope. Over the next couple years, I became intimately familiar with graveyards (robbing the graves of the freshly dead), morgues (taking bits and pieces of unidentified bodies brought in), and humanity's dregs. I killed only once and gained much in the way of experience from that excursion. 

It happened on a fine, late summer night. I attired myself in a new but plain hooded cloak I purchased for the occasion—the hood pulled close about my face—and made my cautious way to the most disreputable part of the town that sprung up as the university was being built decades prior. My destination was the most notorious of the town's three brothels. Truth be told, I despised such places, but in I went to pursue my prize.

The woman I sought stood alone, apparently having just finished with a customer. I caught her eye, and she approached resignedly, hips swaying.

"Twenty minutes," I said, tucking the coins into her hand.

"My name is Bella," she told me as she led me into one of the multitude of back rooms. Her thick, long, black hair swept down to the middle of her back. Her heavily-lidded eyes sparkled with mystery. I paid handsomely for only a few minutes alone with her.

"You're one of those hot shot university students, aren't you?" she purred, undoing the sash of her gown and tossing it aside to reveal flawless, pale skin. I admired her narrow waist and ample breasts.

"I am," I eventually agreed with a friendly smile, and thrust a knife I'd hidden up my sleeve into her chest.

My impeccable knowledge of human anatomy served me well, for my aim was true. The blade found her heart. Blood spurted from the wound as I withdrew the knife with a satisfying sucking sound. She didn't manage to make a noise of protest, her expression frozen in permanent shock.

Deftly, I made an incision at her hairline and removed her scalp. I wrapped my prize in butcher paper and studied the corpse for any additional materials of value. Ideally, I would have taken the entire corpse, but I was low on time and carrying capacity and left the further remains undisturbed.

I did not feel a twinge of regret as I scurried home that evening. No price was too high for my goal.

Professor Flamel encouraged me in the alchemical pursuits he was aware of. (I, like many before me, took a stab at creating the Philosopher's Stone, which ended in abysmal failure.) His apprentice, Professor Snape, disdained my very existence. I never understood why. "You're a bit too good at this, don't you think?" he hissed at me one day, his thin, sallow face twisted in disgust.

"My studying habits are perhaps overzealous, sir," I replied shortly. He glowered and stalked off to intimidate another unsuspecting student.

Even with all the activities and feuds I engaged in, my creature inexorably took shape. She rose from piles of bones and carefully-harvested skin; organs taken fresh from the newly-dead and carefully preserved; blood vessels strung through flesh; hair from the prostitute I murdered.

At last, I was finished. My creature lay stretched out before me, a woman taller and slenderer than I, with delicate pale skin and lustrous black hair falling past her shoulders. She had only slits for a nose, for I found the human nose ugly and cumbersome. All she awaited now was the spark that would bring her from supine corpse to living being.

It was a stormy night. The rain came down in sheets, and the thunder boomed in one long drawn-out growl. My equipment to conduct the power of a lightning strike directly into the heart and brain of my creation sat ready, waiting.

The clock mounted on the wall behind my workstation ticked. Then—

A flash, bright as the noonday sun, a shudder, and silence. Hands trembling in anxious anticipation, I used my thickly-gloved fingers to clumsily undue the conducting apparatus, taking it apart swiftly so that I did not risk overdoing the power now coursing through my creature.

She breathed with a steady expansion and contraction of her ribs. A faint smell of burnt flesh hung about her. Concerned, I investigated the spots on her chest and temples where the electrodes had been attached. Her heart pounded steadily, though the flesh above it was raw and blistering. At her temples, the hair was slightly singed, although not badly. I dressed the burns, then sat back on my heels and waited for her to awaken. In sleep, her face was guileless and relaxed. The corners of my mouth inched upward. I had succeeded in everything I dreamed of. Oh, how I would be remembered.

Several peaceful moments passed. Her papery eyelids fluttered. I leaned forward so that my face would be the first thing she would ever see—

Her eyes... Why were they crimson? Her features had a serpentine cast I hadn't noticed before... Her mouth opened, and a low, dreadful moan emerged. In short, she was hideous, an anathema, horrific to look upon.

I am no coward, but even I shouldn't be expected to be brave under all circumstances. I fled from the laboratory and down the single flight of stairs between me and the front door. I was not dressed for the cold, having set up my apparatus early in the evening. Let her leave my rooms before I return, I prayed to a god I had never believed in. That face, those eyes... I shivered, my arms wrapped uselessly about myself to stave off the chill and the fear.

What had I done?

"Evans?" Someone walked up behind me, putting a steadying hand on my shoulder. "Evans, is everything all right?" I looked up into the concerned face of Professor Dumbledore.

"I'm— That is, everything is fine, sir." No! Everything I'd worked for, falling to pieces in a single evening—

"You aren't a young man named Evans," Dumbledore noted, his concern ebbing away as he studied me in my state of partial dress. "What is your name, then, sweetheart?" His voice became syrupy.

"Potter," I replied shortly. "Abigail Potter."

"I'm absolutely in favor of education for women, but this deception—"

"I'm sorry," I said in a daze. "It was the only way." The only way to realize my ambitions, my ambitions which were foolhardy at best and apocalyptic at worst—

"I understand," he said, affecting sympathy. "Really, I do. But you will need to leave by tomorrow."

"Yes, sir," I said. "It's for the best. I understand."

"Thank you," Dumbledore said, smiling. "Now that we've gotten that nasty business straightened out, why are you out on an evening like this? You could catch cold."

"Sometimes," I whispered, "there are more things to fear inside than out."

He nodded, as if I had spoken some great wisdom, then left me standing alone in the icy drizzle.

I stumbled my way into the mercifully unlocked chapel at the heart of the campus and lay upon one of the hard, wooden pews. I would not seek absolution, but perhaps I could find safety within those purportedly sacred walls.

The march to morning was long and tortuous. By the time the sun rose, I was stiff and shivering, tangled in my chaotic thoughts. I considered simply leaving, without returning to my rooms to collect my things. But what if someone were to find my creature? I had run from her, yet I did not wish death upon her, for surely they would kill her in their disgust... Just before dawn, I resolved to return to my rooms. If the creature were still there, I would... But here my thoughts became clouded. What would I do with her?

In the misty gray light of morning, my situation appeared no less bleak. I rose, stiff and aching, from the pew. The walk back to my rooms was both too brief and not long enough.

My sitting room was undisturbed. I did not linger, moving quickly to my laboratory. As I feared, the creature was nowhere to be seen. Equally concerning, the coat I had left behind—with a bundle of my most sensitive notes tucked within an inside pocket—had disappeared as well. Wherever she was, I thought ruefully, the creature was neither naked nor cold.

I threw my meager possessions into a satchel—the few clothes I owned, a smattering of scientific instruments I had purchased—and counted out the money I had on hand. There was enough to get me home, though only just, and with few amenities. So be it. I couldn't stay here any longer. I certainly had no desire to be here when Dumbledore—and Snape, probably, with his self-satisfied smirk—dropped by to ensure my departure.

With a sigh, I took a final look round. I had made strides forward in natural philosophy here that none would ever know, and yet... my creation ran free across the countryside, doing God only knew what. I would tell no one of my achievement. I could not bear their likely mix of awe and reproach.

The trip home did nothing to raise my depressed spirits. The stagecoaches were rickety and moldering. The inns provided inadequate meals and a thin mat of straw. I spoke to no one and rebuffed all attempts at friendliness. If anyone guessed I was a woman traveling alone, they gave little sign. I remained Harry Evans for a little longer.

My homecoming was quiet. I walked in the door of the comfortable, ramshackle Weasley house—lovingly dubbed the Burrow—and was greeted as though I'd only been gone a day, rather than nigh on three years.

"They found you out, didn't they?" Molly asked gently.

I nodded and collapsed in exhaustion.

The next several months passed in a haze. The illness—from my disappointment at an education not finished, they presumed—kept me bedridden for most of that time. Hermione spent her days with me, sitting by my side and distracting me with ideas about her writing, as she sketched out outlines and took notes feverishly.

"Is there something you're not telling me?" she asked one day a couple months after I first fell ill.

"Why?" I mumbled into my pillows. "Being discovered and thrown out before I could complete my degree isn't reason enough to be this way?"

"You're hiding something," she said flatly. "Something far worse." She paused for a moment, as if debating with herself. “And what would you have if you had finished your degree? Continued as Harry Evans for the rest of your professional life?”

"When have I ever kept anything from you?" I asked. "I have nothing to hide." I refused to answer her second question. I would have done whatever I needed to.

She frowned, unconvinced, but blessedly ceased her uncomfortable inquiries.

Ron and Ginny did their best to cheer me up. Ron suggested all manner of ways to take my revenge upon Professor Dumbledore. Ginny, fingering the finely carved wooden cat hanging about her neck with a somewhat sinister smile, fleshed out his ideas and sat with me when Hermione went home. Before I brought doom upon myself, I would have enjoyed their suggestions. But the knowledge of my monster festered, and I could not.

"You're taking a walk today," Ron said firmly two months after I collapsed. I assented and took what joy I could in the fresh mountain air and his company.

"You should send anonymous articles to this scientific journal," Hermione suggested three months after my collapse. I hesitated but ultimately agreed. My treatises on the effects of electricity upon living and newly-dead individuals were well-received, and I was paid generously.

"Find someone to tie the knot with so he can warm your bed," Ginny—and the twins and Molly, though far less crudely than her children—suggested six months after my collapse. I strenuously refused on that one.

The sickness left me in time. Within the months of my convalescence, nothing was heard of any strange sightings or brutal unsolved murders. Perhaps, I allowed myself to hope, I had nothing to fear and my creation lay dead and rotting in the depths of the forest. It was a heartless thought, yet I could not bring myself to feel guilt over it. No man—or woman—should play god. Better that the evidence of my folly be swept away.

My idyllic existence came to an abrupt halt, however, a year and a half after my joyless return home.

It was a day like any other. I woke up with the sun and began drafting a new article for submission. I was comfortably absorbed in my work when I heard Arthur's shout. "Dear god. Abigail, come here, quickly!"

I dropped my pen, my heart hammering against my ribs, and rushed to the front door to see what the fuss was about.

"I nearly stepped on that when I went out," Arthur said, gesturing at something crumpled on the porch. I bent down to better examine it. It appeared to be a dead bird... a dove, if I wasn't mistaken.

"It must have fallen here during the night," I said.

Arthur shook his head. "Its neck was broken, see? And there's a note tied to it."

Oh... Oh, dear. The note contained only two words.

HELLO, ABIGAIL

I shivered. There was no signature. The handwriting was ill-formed, as though written by a child, but legible.

"Do you have any idea who would leave something like this for you?" Arthur asked kindly—more kindly than I deserved.

"No," I lied. "None whatsoever."

"All right," Arthur said, unfazed. "We'll have Constable Crouch keep an eye out for anything suspicious. I'm sure it's just an idle threat."

I nodded, grimacing tightly.

A dove was mere coincidence, I assured myself. She wouldn't recognize its symbolic appeal, surely. Then again, perhaps it was all a terrible mistake, and the note wasn't meant for me at all. What proof, besides the foreboding in my gut, did I have that it was from the monster I made?

Clinging to this desperate hope, I didn't look for her. The piece within the house was tenuous, with everyone tiptoeing around me.

"They haven't turned up anything," Arthur would report at dinner during the two evenings following the appearance of the dove. "Are you absolutely certain you don't know something?"

I nodded, the strands of my hair escaping from behind my ears.

"Aw, come on, Dad," Ron protested airily. "It's probably some prat playing a prank on her. You know, maybe even someone she met at university. There's nothing to worry about."

At that precise moment, there came a frantic knocking at the door.

"That must be Ginny," Molly said. "She hasn't been in since this morning."

"I'll get it," I said, the hairs on my neck standing on end. Knocks like that never meant anything good. I cautiously opened the door.

"I f-found Ginny! She's dead!" Hermione sobbed, flinging herself into my arms, her hair bushed up to twice its normal size.

My blood froze. "Take a deep breath," I said, holding her close and patting her on the back, "and start from the beginning." The rest of the family flocked concernedly around us.

She took a few gasping breaths and said, "Okay. I was taking a walk, as I do every evening to clear my head. I came up to the river and was ambling along the bank without a care in the world. And then I... tripped and landed on... Ginny." She began to sob again. "She was so c-cold! And her cat pendant was m-missing. I've n-never seen her without it."

"Ron! Fred!" Arthur said, "come with me. Abigail, stay here. No— What are you doing?" He tried to grasp my arm, but I ran out the door too quickly for him to catch me, Hermione still in tears but walking determinedly at my side.

"Show me exactly where you found her," I pleaded.

She shivered, then bolted. I followed at a much slower pace. "There," she pointed as soon as we reached the river. I bent down to examine what rested at our feet.

Ginny lay spread-eagled, flat on her back. Her eyes were closed. Her head lay at a strange angle to the rest of her body, her ginger hair in wild tangles about her face. "Broken neck," I murmured sadly. "Whoever did this to her had brutal efficiency on the mind."

Hermione shuddered, a hand slipping compulsively into her beaded handbag to finger the contents. She stopped, her mouth opening in a silent scream.

"Hermione?" I said sharply. "Hermione, what's wrong now?"

In reply, she raised her hand. The missing carved cat pendant dangled from her fingers, swinging hypnotically to and fro.

"I don't—" she began. "I didn't— I did this?" she exploded and ran off into the trees.

"Wait!" I shouted. "Wait! You were framed! Wait!" I ran after her, desperate to catch up. But Hermione was afraid and determined, and I lost her trail almost instantly. I heard her cry out faintly close by, but the trees were wild and overgrown with ivy and holly bushes.

"No!" I whispered. "Oh, please be all right..."

The others reached the river just as I lost Hermione, but I didn't turn back to acknowledge them. I had to find her. For Ginny, hope was lost, but Hermione still lived...

I found her after pushing my way through an exceptionally thick patch of tangled branches. She was peaceful, relaxed. Her feet dangled a few inches off the ground. A noose was fitted snugly about her neck. And her face— Her face was purple and swollen.

Knowing only too well what I would find, I grasped her wrist to check for a pulse. Nothing stirred beneath her rapidly cooling skin.

I felt an insistent prickling at the back of my neck. "You!" I whispered.

There was no reply.

"Abigail?" Fred's voice, hoarse and remote. "What—?”

"Help," I croaked. I staggered as close to Hermione's body as I could, examining the noose. It was tied in such a way that she appeared to have done it herself. A small rock lay nearby that she could have kicked from under her. Ginny's pendant was wound tightly about her wrist, forever marking her as guilty. To the ignorant eye—all but my own—this was a suicide, a result of a break with reality some would say had been a long time coming.

Constable Crouch approached the gruesome tableau and brusquely pushed me aside. "Rather open-and-shut, I'd say," he mused. "Girl lost her wits and killed her friend, then came back to her senses and put herself out of her misery."

Fred didn't protest. I obligingly fainted.

When I came to, I found myself propped up against a tree while Ron and Arthur cut Hermione loose. Her head flopped sickeningly from side to side. I closed my eyes—dry and aching—but couldn't keep them shut. I knew corpses well—I'd even made one myself. Yet seeing Ginny and Hermione—

I swallowed hard.

The next days dragged. Crouch did not pursue any sort of investigation, as he promised. Ron argued with him vehemently: "There's no way in hell Hermione did this. Someone killed them both." He was ignored. Molly went about the house in a daze, breaking down in desperate sobs at even the subtlest reminder of her daughter. I could not cry. No one questioned me. I stayed up nights pacing, planning to confess everything: The murder I'd committed, the monster I'd made and abandoned. But when morning broke, I lost the nerve.

I took to wandering through the woods and about the foothills. I didn't—and still don't—know what I hoped would come to pass. My own death at my creature's hand, perhaps. This half-formed wish, however, failed to prepare me for the day she at last revealed herself.

There was no warning of her approach. One moment I was walking around the base of a large boulder. The next, I was pressed face-first against the boulder, wiry arms caging me in. "Expecting someone?" a high, raspy voice purred in my ear.

"You, I think," I replied weakly, glancing over my shoulder.

She smiled with one side of her mouth. "Your meandering isn't terribly interesting," she said.

"Why wait so long to speak to me, then?" I snapped.

"My reasons are my own." She stepped away from me, wrapping her arms about herself. I examined her clinically. She wore a coat I recognized as the one I had lost; it had nearly reached my ankles but hung about her knees. Her black hair was unbrushed but flowed down her back in a parody of beauty. Her scarlet eyes peered sharply from her warped, pallid face. In daylight, I noted, her serpentine features were no less horrible to see.

"You're cold," I observed, as a faint tremor took hold of her despite the coat and haphazardly fashioned fur robe she wore.

"I am always cold, thanks to you," she replied, her face impassive.

An apology made its way up my throat, but I swallowed it forcibly and said, "You killed my sister and my friend. I suppose you are now here to kill me." My voice emerged choked, yet inexplicably steady.

"Your death would not satisfy me, I admit," she hummed, raising a spidery hand to trace the shape of my face. "If it were, I would not have gone to the trouble of murdering your loved ones." Her fingers were ice against my skin. "No, I wish for you to live."

Dread filled me at these grating words. "What do you want from me?" I whispered. "A companion? I will make you a companion to join you in your wretchedness. Just don't hurt any more of them and leave me be!" Truthfully, I had no plans on following through with this proposition. Among other things, I no longer possessed the means to build a creature such as she, nor could I imagine repeating my past deeds.

Perhaps she sensed my insincerity. "I do not want but for one companion," she said. "You. Only you. And before you refuse, you will hear me out, creator mine. You owe me that, at the very least."

"Do I?" I hedged.

"You do," she said, forcing me to sit with my back pressed against the boulder, with little visible effort on her part. "Therefore, I shall begin at the beginning."


	2. II: The Creature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other side of the tale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: attempted rape. Also a whole lot o' death.

Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested. – Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_

II

I do not have a name in the traditional sense. I have been called many things during my comparatively short lifetime: Freak, Wretch, Devil's Spawn. I was Mary for a brief time, but the old man who addressed me as such is dead. My creator refers to me as she sees fit in the moment, and I would never have "Mary" fall from her lips. Her usual form of address suits me, but is not something I wish to dwell upon.

My first memories are hazy. I've been able to piece them together since I've become wiser to the ways of the world, however, and I cannot say they are pleasant. I recall blazing green eyes, which withdrew quickly enough that I doubted I'd seen them at all for months. I remember twinging pain on my chest. I remember rolling from the surface on which I had been stretched out and landing in an ungainly heap upon the floor. I remember the cold.

The cold: Bone-deep, perpetual cold.

I didn't understand this to be cold until I discovered warmth. Until then, my chronic shivering was all I knew.

I remember wandering about the room—a laboratory, as I now know—and finding a heavy coat carelessly tossed aside. It took me several attempts to discover which way of holding it was right side up and to thread my arms through the sleeves. The coat was certainly warm, but the sleeves stopped several inches above my wrists and the hem barely reached my knees.

I remember stumbling down the narrow flight of stairs and out the door that had been left ajar. I needed to move. I didn't know where I was going, or why, only that I couldn't stay still.

The more I moved, it seemed, the less I felt the cold. I did not cease walking—something that came instinctually to me—until my feet ached and the first pangs of hunger—an entirely new sort of pain—made themselves known. The sun had risen—though I didn't quite understand then what had happened to send the darkness away, and I was deep within the trees. The small animals I saw nibbled on bits of plant debris they found on the forest floor; I had no recourse but to copy them. The hunger eased but was not satisfied.

I spent days in the forest, the coat and the shelter of the trees my only comforts. I listened to the songs of the birds, so unlike the faint growls and squeaks of the crawling animals. Once or twice, I caught glimpses of figures that walked upright as I did, but they never saw me, and I was content with this. They wore heavy boots upon their feet and were shrouded in heavy coats and leg coverings, and I felt small and fragile in comparison. Larger animals fell in their wake, and their bodies were taken away—skinned and quartered for purposes I could only guess at—when their killers left.

The trees opened up abruptly one day into a large clearing in which a small cottage sat. Smoke poured from the chimney, producing a smell that brought to mind pleasing images which I had never known. I stood for a moment, watching the pale smoke rise. I heard the footfalls of someone inside. The door opened after a moment, and an old man emerged.

I stared.

He walked slowly about, leaning on a sturdy wooden staff. His large, silvery eyes met mine through the shield of branches. "I know you're there," he said gently. "Please come out."

I didn't understand his words then, but the tone of his voice was reassuring. I stiffened as he first spoke, but he repeated "please come out", accompanying his repetition with a beckoning gesture, and I hesitantly emerged.

"What happened to you?" he asked, examining me with his eerie eyes. "I have never seen anyone quite like you." He came closer, and I fled back into the trees. Sighing, he stretched out an imploring hand. I watched him. He waited. I emerged a second time.

"That's it," he said. "You're shivering. Come inside." He pointed at the cottage, then to himself and to me and opened the door. Uncertain, I followed him across the threshold.

Warmth!

My body registered the abrupt change in temperature with a shudder of pleasure and an involuntary sigh. The old man frowned at my reaction. "How long have you wandered?" he wondered aloud. "Here, sit down, so I can take a look at your feet." He pointed to a chair. I stared confusedly at it. "Oh dear," he said. "You really are a strange one." He demonstrated, and I sat.

He cleaned and bandaged my aching feet, commenting all the while on their unusual narrowness. "It's almost as though you are a new species roving about these woods," he murmured. "So new, in fact, that you have yet to learn speech and basic human survival." With that, he took it upon himself to teach me.

I learned with unusual swiftness, or so the old man assured me. We began with the names of objects about the cottage and gradually moved on to books and the words within them. My first words were formed with difficulty. I hated the harsh timbre of my voice, but the old man never discouraged me, and thus I persisted. "You really are like a newborn: You've never learned a language before," the old man said one day as I traced out the last letters of the alphabet with a triumphant flourish. "Do you have any idea where you came from?"

I shook my head. "Cold," I said. "I remember cold."

"Do you remember anything else?" he asked.

I did, but my ability to articulate thoughts aloud was still inadequate for proper descriptions.

"Try sketching it," the old man said.

I shook my head. "Too much."

It was a simple life that the old man led. I arrived in autumn while he finished preparations for winter. I simply watched then, curled up beneath furs. He went into the village a mile or so away every week to pick up any necessary supplies and to catch up on local happenings. He had a garden plot we tended during the spring and summer, and from this I learned about plants and animals and food preservation. I learned to stitch and sewed some extra furs the old man had on hand into a robe of impressive warmth, which I wear to this day.

Within an inner pocket of the coat I found in my first conscious moments was a sheaf of papers, rolled tightly and bound with string. Whoever put them there clearly wished for them to stay together and preserved for future perusal, though why they'd left the coat in which they'd put them was a mystery. I was reluctant to show them to the old man, certain they would prove all his suspicions true. It took me many months but after I'd been with him for about a year, I could read well enough to decipher the cramped script.

_After all my years of labor, my creature is assembled in her entirety. Tonight is the night where my genius shall be proven beyond doubt, the night humanity's salvation shall rise._

I dropped them in disgust and shock when I reached the end, my eyes burning with fatigue. Bits and pieces swam through my mind: my creature, subjects, fresh components, galvanic process. And most of all, a name. Her name.

**Abigail Potter.**

My creator.

My… mother?

_Creating life out of death is not just for God anymore._

Not once did Abigail Potter refer to herself as my mother, or to me as her child. Perhaps I should have expected this. She had abandoned me at the moment of my waking. And, least surprising of all, she gave me no name.

The old man and I had little use for names. He received no company, and I did not venture far. In the books he had me read, the tales' participants had names—specific words by which they were addressed.

"I'm Ollivander," he told me gently when I asked if he, too, had a name. "Would you like a name of your own?"

Oh, did I ever.

"Mary?" he suggested. "It's a common name and entirely unexpected for one such as you."

"Yes," I said. Mary came from he who took me in and taught me much. It meant more to me than he ever knew.

Our second winter came and went. I was content. I would search out my creator one day, but not just yet.

Then spring came, and my existence changed irrevocably.

It began as a morning like any other. I awoke, built up the fire, put the kettle on, and went to wake the old man.

He wouldn't wake. His silvery eyes remained closed. His hands were stiff and would not bend. He had no heartbeat.

I knew of death. I had seen it in the animals I learned to hunt and had read of it in the few books the old man owned. But I had never seen it quite like this: Up close and…

The panic did not immediately set in. I left the old man where he lay and tried to go about my usual activities: eating breakfast, taking a run outside the cottage to warm myself, and sitting to read Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_ for the third or fourth time. (Marlowe, Milton, the Bible: the books I learned to read from… and much more besides.)

Concentration was impossible. I paced round and round as the shadows slowly lengthened. I should flee, I told myself. Someone from the village would come soon to see why he hadn't made his weekly appearance, and if they saw me here—

Near sunset—when I had given up all pretense of distraction and curled up beneath my coat and furs and the old man's body began to smell sickly sweet, I heard three sets of approaching footsteps. Today was supposed to be his village run, and as I had feared, here were the villagers to see what was the matter.

I deliberated for a moment between hiding in the forest and staying put. By the time they arrived, I would not have run terribly far, and the evidence of a second person's presence was unmistakable. With trepidation, then, I stayed where I was, waiting for them to arrive.

"Ollivander, you old kook, are you in there?" a man's voice boomed. The harshly-worded question was punctuated by an almighty banging upon the thin front door. When no answer was forthcoming, the men outside easily smashed the door in and trooped inside.

"He's dead, all right," the one who had shouted—tall, well-dressed, golden-haired—remarked as he caught the scent of putrefying flesh. "About time, too." His companions—two nondescript, heavily-muscled hulks—nodded in fervent agreement.

I held my breath, staying as still as possible, hoping—not praying, for if I was made by the hand of man, then I had no god at all—that they wouldn't notice me.

But luckless was my birth, and luckless would I always be.

"Someone else was here," the golden-haired one said. "There are dishes enough for two." He pointed at the plates and knives stacked upon the table. "And here." He lifted a slate of my clumsy writing exercises. "Almost looks like he found a child somewhere."

"Mr. Malfoy," one of the hulks mumbled, his eyes settling upon my pile of furs.

"What is it, Crabbe?" the now-named Malfoy snapped.

"That there isn't just a bunch of furs." Crabbe nodded in my direction.

Malfoy moved quickly, uncovering my head and dragging me out of my huddle. "The Lord protect us," he hissed. "What in the Devil's name are you?" His grip was a vice, strong enough to make the bones beneath his hands creak. I whimpered in pain.

His lips trembling, Malfoy snarled, "What are you, you foul monster?" He smashed my head against the wall behind me, and pinpricks of light exploded behind my eyes.

"No one," I rasped.

"Did you kill the old man?" he barked. "Did you drain the life from him?"

"No," I spat.

"I don't believe you, freak." He threw me onto my back and began tearing open my furs with one hand while opening his trousers with the other. "This should make you sing," he growled, bearing down upon me. Something hard and hot pressed against my thigh.

He pulled my legs apart with hands that left angry bruises on my delicate skin, his length pressing more forcefully against me.  
"Tight little virgin, aren't you, freak?" He drew a finger painfully between my legs. In his rage, he made a single, fatal miscalculation: He left my hands free. Screaming in a way I'd never known I could, I wrapped my slender fingers about his throat. He began to choke, attempting to break my grip, but my creator had endowed me with surprising strength. (It never occurred to me to be grateful. If not for her, I would never have been in that situation to begin with.) In desperation, I managed to snap his neck.

"Mr. Malfoy!" one of the goons cried.

I threw Malfoy's heavy body off me and rose to my full height—comparable to theirs. Rage and terror made me wild. The next moments were a blur. When I came back to myself, both goons lay dead at my feet, their thick necks also broken, blood pouring from gashes where their heads had hit the floor.

I re-wrapped my furs and tightly fastened my coat. As a final preparation, I laced up the old man's boots, which fit me badly. I could not remain in that house of pain and death.

What was I to do? Where was I to go?

I removed my creator's notes from where I kept them secure in my—her—coat's inner pocket. Surely, I could find her. Surely there was some clue that would help me reach where she currently resided.

There! Tucked into the margins of the first page was an inscription: Abigail Potter, originally of Ottery St. Catchpole. It sounded like the name of a village.

She had abandoned me, but I had to know from what I came. I was alone in the world. I had nothing more to lose. Pulling a hood down over my face, I began to walk.

It was not an easy journey. Nights were cold and full of the golden-haired man's shadow. Walking was tiring in boots made for shorter, wider feet. Food was hard to come by; my stomach would clench in the same sort of pain I recalled from my early wanderings when I failed to acquire any. Once or twice, I entered villages and towns to ask for directions, my hood drawn close about my face, the coat obscuring my distinctly feminine figure. People answered my questions, but once they comprehended the color of my eyes and the flatness of my profile, they drove me from town with thrown stones and frightened epithets. … Had they seen my face in full, they would no doubt have tried to kill me. Each incident left me trembling in terror, remembering the scalding, oppressive closeness of the golden-haired man. As they chased me, I imagined their own violent ends in vivid detail: cracking bones and shattering skulls and chests torn open to expose their bloody hearts. I vowed my vengeance upon this world that hurt and rejected me. My vow of vengeance was the surest comfort I had.

But first, I would meet my maker.

It took me a month to reach Ottery St. Catchpole, which turned out to be rather larger than I expected, given the quaintness of its name. Once there, I was at a loss. How was I to go about finding my creator? I knew nothing of her appearance except for the emerald eyes of my first memory. I knew nothing of her family, but she must have had one.  
In the end, fate favored me, although one could argue that it resembled disfavor far more.

I had concealed myself just outside the village to watch all comings and goings. The stream of humanity differed in no significant ways from anywhere else I'd been—dour old men, excitable small children clinging to their mothers' skirts, and grown men and women alike walking alone. Two younger women emerged halfway through my second day of lurking, hand in hand, talking animatedly. One was of medium height with curling brown hair and a chronically pinched expression. The other was shorter, with hair as dark as night and eyes as green as fresh-growing grass. 

I knew her. I had found her. I followed.

Their walk took them partway into the forest, where they loitered for a few moments, before abandoning that path and making their way to the bank of the swiftly-flowing river. "That article you just submitted was rather…" the unknown woman said.

"You didn't like it?" she queried.

"Oh, it wasn't that," her companion assured her. "I have never understood your ability to remove yourself so completely from the emotions of potential subjects."

She sighed. "I don't. I—" She left the rest of her sentence hanging like a worm-ridden apple—a clump of rotting flesh, as she was.

The unknown woman threw an arm over her shoulders. "It's fine, Abigail. Really."

Well, if I'd had any doubts left as to whether this was indeed my creator, then the unknown woman put them to rest with that casually spoken name. They did not notice me as they returned to the village and entered a ramshackle, many-storied house with a rusty sign out front proclaiming it The Burrow.

Could she be any less discreet? I thought, my thin lips twisting into a gleeful smirk.

Now that I had found her, I took a couple days to decide upon my next step. She seemed content in her current existence. I wanted to thoroughly shatter that undeserved peace of mind. Before I introduced myself to her properly, she should be jumping at shadows and in crippling emotional distress.

A note, I decided, delivered in such a way as to leave no doubt who she was dealing with. How dare she have any doubts whatsoever.

The note was simple but painful to compose. Without ink or any sort of ripe berries with juice enough for my purposes (currants grew everywhere, taunting me with their overabundance), I had no choice but to write in my own blood. It was nigh impossible to make my fingers bleed enough, and by the time I'd finished, my entire hand throbbed. These circumstances could be construed as being for the best, really. The effect would be… adequate, if she noticed—which she likely would not.

Next, I found my symbol.

The Book of Genesis had been my favorite portion of the Bible, rife with parallels to my own existence—especially the portion where God takes it upon Himself to rid the world of his creations, except for a deserving few. And so—

_And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth._

With an agility that impressed even me, I caught one of the first doves returning for the season. Let her think what she would of my choice. But how I hoped she understood my reference.

In the hour before dawn that is neither quite day nor quite night, I delivered my greeting card to The Burrow's front stoop. I set my burden down with nary a sound and hared away on silent feet. Then… I waited.

I was not disappointed.

She continued to take walks—sometimes with a ginger-haired man, sometimes with a ginger-haired woman in addition to her usual companion—but with many furtive glances into the depths of the forest. Much to my confusion, however, she made no visible effort to locate me. Denial, I presumed. What a fool she was. How had someone so shortsighted found it in themselves to make something—someone, I corrected myself with difficulty—someone like me?

I became bored with her passivity. I needed something… more, something that would freeze the blood in her veins and send her tearing through the forest in a mad dash to find me before she lost everything dear to her.

(The murder of her loved ones? you may assume. No, I wasn't thinking so explicitly just yet, only acting in the way that felt best.)

Two days after my initial greeting, the opportunity I sought stumbled directly into my meandering path. The red-haired woman stood alone on the riverbank, fingering the carved wooden cat about her throat. Her expression was contemplative, as though she were puzzling out the greatest mysteries known to humankind. (Mysteries, then, that did not concern me in the least.)

"Hello," I said, emerging from my hiding place behind a stand of reeds.

The woman started and spun to stare at me, open-mouthed. "Who… What the devil are you?" she whispered, clutching her pendant. I glowered at it in disgust.

"Your dearest Abigail has neglected to tell you many things," I replied, raising my eyes to meet her brown ones.

"What do you mean?" She shuddered as our gazes met.

I stepped closer, lifting my hands to rest on her shoulders, keeping her in place so she couldn't bolt. "Haven't you wondered about all the illustrious deeds she performed while she was away?"

The woman stiffened at my touch. "Of course I have. Every question I've asked her has been answered in exhaustive detail… more than I ever wanted, if you must know."

"Such as?"

"The strides forward she made in alchemy and her unjust expulsion… stuff like that." The woman bared her teeth. "Now, let me go and stop implying horrible things."

"Let me be more direct, if I may. She made me. She breathed life into me. And in the dead of night, she abandoned me."

"That's impossible," she snapped.

"Ah, but she wanted to accomplish impossible feats."

The woman shook her head in disbelief.

"What are you to her?" I murmured, remembering my vow of vengeance.

"Like a sister," she said without hesitation.

"Good," I said, letting my hands glide with an almost sensual slowness upward to wrap about her throat. "Any last words?"

"Let me go!" she hissed shrilly, beginning to struggle.

"Pity," I said, and twisted. Her protests were cut off abruptly. I dropped her body unceremoniously and bent down to examine my handiwork. Her head rested oddly, her hair in a wild tangle. That shade of red was truly horrific. … Perfect.

Footsteps fell faintly in the distance. Thinking quickly, I snatched the cat pendant from around the corpse's neck and flitted back to my hiding place. To my excitement, it was Abigail's favorite associate—she of the curly brown hair. She stumbled quite literally upon the corpse, her mouth opening in horror as she caught her footing. She dropped to her knees to get a closer look. During her absorption, I slipped the cat pendant into her handbag, wondering with unbridled anticipation what might follow.

The bushy-haired woman heaved herself to her feet and ran unsteadily in the direction of The Burrow, tears streaming down her cheeks. She would bring my creator here.

She came running, clutching the brunette's hand. Her examination of the ginger's body was clinical. "Whoever did this had brutal efficiency on the mind," she concluded. I edged from the reeds and back into the forest as she spoke. The brunette, meanwhile, seemed to have discovered the mark of my appreciation, for she broke into a sprint to the forest. Once she was on a level with me, I shadowed her movements.

I heard Abigail cry out behind us. "Wait! You were framed! Wait!" I stepped out in front of the brunette, an old rope I'd picked up from a garbage heap behind one of the village's large houses wound between my hands.

The woman screamed, but I was on her before she could make further noises. Hoisting her easily, I knotted the rope about her neck and let her hang from a sturdy branch. I kicked a small boulder near enough to her, so it would appear she had hanged herself. The noose fit well. As a final touch, I placed the pendant over one of her wrists, so it was easily visible to anyone passing by.

My creator forced her way through the tangle of ivy and holly nearby. In resigned dread, she checked her associate's wrist for a pulse. Finding nothing, she glared around her. "You!" she croaked.

I made no reply.

A few men—most with red hair like the night’s first kill—joined my creator, who collapsed in shock after they began voicing their conclusions.

I left her then, uninterested in the conversation of the elderly constable and the useless exclamations of her apparently adoptive family.

She was not one of them, anyway. Why should she be so distraught over the deaths of those unrelated to her, whereas she had abandoned me, her actual creation?

I had a claim to her, I realized. She was mine, whether or not she admitted it or agreed.

She took to wandering aimlessly through the forest, her head turning every which way, her eyes downcast. I reveled in her agony.

I crept up behind her as she stood facing away from the path, studying a large boulder to perhaps divine her best course. I pressed myself against her back, placing my hands above her head to keep her in place. I could feel the immense heat of her body even through my many layers of clothing. "Expecting someone?" I purred, inhaling her rich scent.

"You, I think," she replied, glancing at me, her expression utterly resigned.

I gave a half-smile. "Your meandering isn't terribly interesting."

"Why wait so long to speak to me, then?" she snapped, eyes flashing.

Why, indeed. "My reasons are my own," I replied. Regretfully, I stepped away from her and crossed my arms under my breasts in a vain attempt to hold in some of her warmth. I took this opportunity to examine her closely for the first time. Her hair was cut short about her shoulders. Her skin was pale but still darker than mine. Her face was delicate, with a faint touch of pink in her cheeks. Her eyes were almond-shaped and arresting in their vividness. Perhaps it was merely because of what she was to me, but I found her beautiful—the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I loathed her anew for it.

"You're cold," she noted, as I burrowed into my coat and furs.

"I am always cold, thanks to you," I said flatly, letting none of the anger I felt show upon my face.

She started to say something, then reconsidered with a convulsive swallow. "You killed my sister and my friend. I suppose you are now here to kill me."

"Your death would not satisfy me, I admit," I hummed, finally giving in to the temptation to touch her again and tracing her face with a gentle finger. "If it were, I would not have gone to the trouble of murdering your loved ones." Oh, I wanted to touch her like this forever… She kept herself still, her breaths coming in short bursts. "No, I wish for you to live."

"What do you want from me?" she whispered, pursing her bloodless lips in dread. "A companion? I will make you a companion to join you in your wretchedness. Just don't hurt any more of them and leave me be!" I did not believe her for a second, and even if I had, a companion as cold and hideous as I was a prospect I refused to entertain.

"I do not want but for one companion," I retorted. "You. Only you. And before you refuse, you will hear me out, creator mine. You owe me that, at the very least." She would hear me. I would give her no choice.

"Do I?" she asked, looking particularly shifty.

"You do," I assured her, lowering her to sit against the boulder. "Therefore, I shall begin at the beginning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis 8:11 (KJV)


	3. III: The Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation devolves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The dub-con tag applies. Really, there is nothing redemptive here.

'Man,' I cried, 'how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!' — Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_

III

I listened to her tale, for she gave me no choice. When she came to the end—both our presents, now, I sat in silence. My thoughts were mired in a haze of horror. I struggled to form even the barest phrase.

"Well?" she said impatiently. "Do you have anything to say? Did my tale have so little effect upon your frozen heart?"

I considered her. She leaned forward earnestly, slender, long-nailed fingers twining and untwining in hypnotic agitation. As I watched, the thought came to me—the first full sentence since her story's end—with terrible force: If I had not abandoned her, Ginny and Hermione—my sisters, my friends—would not be dead.

And again, with more force still: If I had not made her, I would never have abandoned her.

… To say nothing of what she herself had experienced at the hands of monstrous men.

But did her pain matter in the grand scheme of things? She killed many times over and, by her own admission, without remorse. And yet… Did that make her any worse than me? I killed Bella, the prostitute, in cold blood, whereas she—

(First in self-defense, then in cold blood also.)

I stood abruptly. She allowed it, her hands hanging at her sides, palms turned outward in a show of peace.

"What do you expect from me now?" I asked quietly, my voice scraping jaggedly up my throat.

"I have no expectations, other than that you will again run from your responsibilities," she replied. "What do you intend?"

What did I intend? Her assessment stung… a bit. She wasn't wrong, little though I cared to agree with her, especially concerning my own mistakes.

She devoured me with those sanguine eyes as I stood stiffly before her. No one had ever before studied me with such intensity. It was… gratifying. I felt a heat, a hunger awaken within me, a throbbing begin between my legs.

She was my creature, my downfall.

None but I knew of her existence. I could do… whatever I wished. I could revenge myself upon her. I could…

I could be her downfall, too.

And why not? I had nothing more to lose.

(But I was wrong about that, hapless reader. So very wrong. There is always more to lose.)

"I would like you to lay upon the ground," I said.

"Why?" she snapped. "I will not abase myself before you."

I smiled coldly. "I am not asking you to. I simply wish to see. I simply wish to remember."

She furrowed her dark brows in confusion but complied, stretching full-length in the new spring grass.

I crouched beside her, my fingers making quick work of the line of buttons down her front. The coat was ragged now, far more worn than when it had belonged to me. That done, I spread it open. "Slide your arms out, please," I commanded.

"It isn't warm enough out here for that." Despite her protest, she did my bidding, glaring mutinously all the while. I tossed the coat aside and untied the firmly-knotted belt of her robe.

"Is this necessary?" she sighed resignedly, removing her arms from the wide sleeves with reluctance at my peremptory gesture.

"It is." I sat back on my heels, taking in every inch of her body. I began at her feet, unlacing the badly-scuffed man's boots she wore and tossing them near the coat. Her feet were narrower than I remembered them being, so narrow that I wondered how they could take her weight. She had trimmed her toenails brutally short—so that her feet could fit into the boots as best they could, I assumed. I traced the faint seams at the backs of her heels, then followed them up her calves.

"Your skin is so soft," I murmured, "except where I stitched pieces from separate cadavers together."

"I am aware of your methods," she said shortly, her voice somewhat unsteady from her periodic shivering.

"You read my notes," I said. "I can't say that pleases me."

"Shouldn't have left them behind, now should you?" she sneered. "What kind of a coward are you, anyway? Must have run pretty fast, as though the dogs of hell were slavering at your back."

"Hush," I said, kneading my fingers firmly into the skin of her thighs, then moving swiftly past her bony hips to trace her ribs and chest. Her heartbeat fluttered wildly.

I pressed my mouth against her slightly caved stomach, letting my fingers play about her small breasts. Her nipples were stiff with cold. A scar marred the spot above her heart. I felt a twinge of… something, and without much conscious thought, I kissed it. I flattened my palms over her breasts, then shifted so that my face was level with hers.

"You want me to keep touching you, don't you?" I snarled, lifting my hands and interlacing my fingers at the back of her neck, where one of the larger stitches was obscured by her hair. Her skin was cool and unnaturally smooth to the touch, like an ice sculpture bound in flesh.

"Yes!" she stuttered. "Oh, yes!" Our faces were so close that I could see the blood vessels in her eyes. Her cat-like pupils were contracted to near invisibility.

"I could take you apart, piece by piece, as I assembled you," I whispered against her mouth, tasting her frigid lips. She smelled of death; she tasted of rot; she was mine. Oh, how I wished I didn't want her.

I worked my fingers into the seams between the disparate pieces of skin that swept up her ribs. The piercing of my nails caused her to cry out.

"Stop, please!"

It was the first real protest she'd made. I relented a little, gently stroking where I'd hurt her with the tips of my fingers.

The throbbing between my legs became terribly insistent, and I could no longer ignore it. I licked two fingers thoroughly, then shifted my attention to an area I had not yet explored, lifting my skirts and settling between her legs.

"What are you doing?" she gasped as I worked a finger inside her, my thumb circling her clitoris.

"Tending to a neglected portion of your education," I replied.

"To— To what end?" she asked, her hands tangling in my hair, claw-like nails snagging uncomfortably in small tangles. She drew me down into another frigid kiss.

"My enjoyment, and, incidentally, yours," I said, touching my tongue to hers. Our breath came in short, pleasure-ridden pants.

She learned quickly, giving in return with enthusiasm; my patience was rewarded in spades.

"Promise me something," I murmured as we lay face-to-face on her furs, our bare legs wound together.

"What?" she croaked.

"Promise me that you will never again kill a human being."

"What right do you have to ask that of me?" she sighed. "You have given me hardly more than nothing—"

"I made you. Without me, you would still be no more than bits of corpses."

"And I am supposed to be grateful for the miserable existence I have led?" she snapped, throwing me from her and standing in one fluid motion. She left the robe where it was, retrieving her coat and fastening it with swift, jerky movements. "Because, you see, I can't say I am."

I ignored her tirade. Her gratitude or lack thereof meant little to me. "Will you make the promise I ask for?" I said peevishly, scrambling to my feet and straightening my rumpled skirt.

"I will, but I have conditions."

"And what might those be?" I placed my hands on my hips and glowered at her through narrowed eyes.

"Firstly," she said, relaxing her rigid stance, "you will come away with me for a time so that I may know you. I will allow you some time to say your goodbyes and put your affairs in order."

"Hmm," I said. "I hate you; you hate me. I think you should reconsider. What is the second?"

"As things currently stand, you can return to the people you claim to love, and not one of them will know by looking at you that we are bound by malice and hubris." Her eyes flashed. "Whereas no part of my body, inside and out, is free of you. You have used me in ways I did not ask to be used. Now, I shall claim what is mine." 

"How?" I asked. "I take it this is entirely nonnegotiable."

"I will mark you with the symbol of my birth," she replied simply. "And no. Whatever else happens between us, I demand this."

I had no desire to go away with her for any period of time. Giving in to this rather silly demand could potentially put her in a better mood for compromise. Therefore, I did not resist as she forced me onto my back and crouched next to me—essentially a reversal of our earlier positions. Nor did I resist when she grasped the knife I habitually kept sheathed up my sleeve.

"What are you doing?" I rasped.

"Leaving my mark, the only way I know how." (Well, I thought with strange pride, with this I could empathize.) She placed the point of the blade in the center of my forehead and pressed it deep into the skin. "You can't escape me anymore, no matter how far you may try to run." She began to carve a shape. Blood spurted, dripping into my eyes. The pain was beyond anything I had ever felt.

"Cease this at once!" I snapped halfheartedly, tears trickling into my hair. She paused long enough to cuff my ear with her free hand, then resumed her grisly art with twice as much vehemence.

"Now that's a mark to be proud of," she proclaimed, stepping back to study her work. I lay in a heap at her feet, my teeth gritted to hold in any more involuntary cries.

"I wish you could see yourself," she said, wiping some of my blood away with the back of her hand, then bringing it to her lips with a curious expression. Her tongue darted out for a taste. "Foul," she concluded.

"I should think so," I replied with a shudder. "If you are quite finished, then I believe we are nearly done here." I stood unsteadily and held my hand out for the knife. She cleaned it off in the grass and handed it back graciously.

"Will you agree to my terms, then?" she queried with understated eagerness.

"I require three days to fully decide upon my next course," I said. "Then we shall see. Within that time, of course, you will kill no one."

"What's that? Three days for you to come to a decision I have little doubt I will find unsatisfactory?" she asked, frowning in polite dismay.

I sighed, raising my hand to rub my smarting forehead, only to drop it when my palm met with the stickiness of my blood. "We both have what we truly want," I replied archly. "You have seen and met and marked me. I have come to understand how right I was to abandon you. After this, there's really no point in continuing a relationship that has no clear benefits for either of us."

Her face went slack. Somehow, I had managed to surprise her, or perhaps to have offended her. "That was not all I wanted from you," she hissed. "Need I remind you?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Please continue."

"I came here to understand from whence I came," she went on. "By that, of course, I mean to know everything there is to know about you."

"What—" I examined her crumpled robe, enjoying her indignation at my pretended ignorance.

"I have laid myself bare. You must do the same. Coming away with me is the only scenario in which that is possible."

"No. Absolutely not." I turned my back on her, striding quickly away. "Three days," I shot over my shoulder. "Do nothing but wait."

"Don't you dare walk away from me!" she shrieked. "You'll regret this! You'll be crawling back to me on your knees when I've finished!"

Ah, the truth of her, revealed at last. "Good luck," I spat back. "Failure is inevitable. I never crawl."

I arrived back at the Burrow to gasps and murmurs of sympathy. "What happened to you?" Molly asked, gazing in horror at the blood drying on my face and rushing to get a damp cloth, shooing the hovering Fred and Ronald from the room as she went. Since Ginny's murder, she had been jumping at shadows and watching my movements about the house constantly, concerned as she was that I might disappear, too. When I went on my meandering walks during the day, she begged me to be home before nightfall, after her repeated attempts to dissuade me from going out altogether failed.

My injury seemed to confirm all her fears. She led me to a chair and pushed me rather unceremoniously into it, her gentle ministrations verging on painful. "I knew that sweet girl didn't kill Ginny. I knew it wasn't safe out there!" she said. "I've already lost one daughter and someone as good as. I couldn't bear to lose you, too…" Her voice trailed away with a hitch.

I sat stiffly as she finished mopping away the blood and began to dress my creature's mark. "You have nothing to fear," I said. "This was an accident. I ran into a tree. I should be more careful."

"This is too deliberately drawn to have been caused by a tree," she said firmly. "It almost looks like a lightning bolt."

Ah, so that's what she'd meant by "the symbol of my birth." Typical.

"I can't imagine what you're hiding, Abigail, but please don't be afraid to tell someone." She sounded sincere. If she had even the slightest inkling of what I concealed, then she would have ordered me to leave her home in disgust. "Now, I'm going to go to Constable Crouch and beg him to reopen his investigation. There is something out there, dear, something that means no one well."

I did not reply. She patted my shoulder reassuringly. I wanted to thank her for believing so wrongly in my innocence, to tell her how her daughter truly died. But I was selfish, then as now, and did not wish to see her expression when she learned the truth.

I had promised my creature that I would return to her. I never intended to keep it. She, as I should have expected, did not keep hers in turn.

I did not go outdoors during the three days we had agreed on. I locked myself away in the dusty, pigeon-infested attic at the top of the house and wrote florid apology letters to all and sundry, every one of which I tore into pieces. I needed to run far away, where none would find me, where I could continue publishing anonymously and avoiding my fiend.

But where to go? And when? And how? The questions became harder to answer when I considered how to go about it discreetly.

The pigeons flitted about, mocking me with their relaxed cooing and their joy in making nests of my destroyed letters. They reminded me irresistibly of ugly, still-living incarnations of the dove that had heralded her arrival just over a week prior.

"Shoo!" I shouted, waving my arms about threateningly. The feathered rats ignored me.

My planning and one-sided war with my winged companions came to an abrupt halt when they found Ronald's corpse on the evening of the third day. My creature, it seemed, had no wish to be snubbed.

Fine, I decided, slipping out the front door whilst the remaining Weasleys clung to each other in their shock and grief, Crouch fruitlessly trying to reassure them. No one noticed my departure.

I would finish my foolhardy experiment decisively. I had given her life, and I would take it back. She would never hurt another soul. She would rest in the earth from whence she came.

So much for my goal to save humanity from itself. She was too human in the end to be anyone's salvation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: "Voldemort" and "Abigail, why are you you like this?"


	4. IV: The Creature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ending, for what it's worth.

'Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.' — Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_

IV

My robe dried slowly. I had lain it out next to the small fire I built—an unusual dalliance with luxury, since I preferred to remain discreet. She had driven me to it, naturally. My discovery now would be on her head.

I curled beneath my coat, the fire's warmth doing little to ease the constant cold. I remembered the burning touch of her fingers on my ribs, the melting heat of her mouth as she kissed her way up my body.

Her fingers roughly (efficiently, quickly) working me open had been far less welcome than anything else that had occurred. I hadn't disliked it, and yet...

She had not done it for me. Nothing she had ever done was for me. I was an embodiment of her deepest insecurities, her darkest compulsions.

I would never be anything more.

I stared deeply into the flames. My hands still stung from the cold of the river water with which I had feverishly scrubbed my robe clean of her taint. I wondered why I even bothered with such a thankless task to begin with. It did nothing to cleanse me.

Logs crumbled, shooting up a cascade of amber sparks. Early spring night birds called to one another. No one called to me.

(I was not part of this world, with my monstrous face and my tattered soul. She had made it so.)

Three days was not long, yet it seemed interminable. When my robe dried enough to be worn that first night—enough, in this instance, meaning it remained damp for another day, I smothered the fire and walked. When I finally slept, my dreams were eldritch things, filled with apparitions for which I had no names.

Her wanderings ceased. I ran across no signs of her emergence from the Burrow whatsoever. Coward, I thought. It would have been satisfying to think she was hiding from me, but I rather expected she was wallowing in guilt and contemplating an escape.

When the appointed hour on the third day came, she did not come with it.

Fine, I thought. Unsurprising to the point of dull predictability. Why, then, did it hurt?

Why, then, did my shoulders shake and my breath come in short bursts and my eyes drip incessantly?

"Hey, are you all right?"

I must have been louder than I realized, there near the forest's edge. At the sound of a voice, I found myself crouching defensively. Ronald, Abigail's adoptive brother, stood feet from me, his hand outstretched in concern and consolation. My heart pounded wildly. The only thought I had in that moment—branded into my memory—was that here was a man, and I was alone.

The golden-haired man's shadow had not left me.

"Do you need any help? I was just taking a stroll here and heard you..."

It was swift. It was brutal. Unlike other kills, this one bled profusely. I had leapt before I quite realized what I was doing. My nails tore into his throat. His cries for help were quickly choked. His struggles were fruitless.

Disgusted—with her for not honoring her word, with myself for how badly I had startled, with the state of the world—I kicked the corpse aside and hurried deeper into the forest. They would find him soon, and then— Then I had no idea. She would come for me, I knew, but after that...

When I crept back to the spot of my most recent kill half an hour or so later, the body had been moved. Drops of blood and fading footprints marred what had previously been an undisturbed patch of grass.

Death drew her, if nothing else would. If she hadn't already left town, anyway.

I didn't have long to dwell. Her silhouette detached itself from the late-afternoon shadows.

She approached with purpose. She'd dispensed with the heavy skirts she'd worn before, now sporting a pair of trousers that fit her—suited her better, I concluded. Her hair was wilder than ever, unwashed and unkempt. Her eyes had a feverish gleam. The mark I'd etched into her forehead was covered by a fresh bandage.

"You broke your word," she said hoarsely.

"So did you," I replied. There was no point in attempting to explain. My excuses would mean nothing, would do nothing to alter the image of me she so treasured, would make me pitiable.

"I have decided. This ends here," she snarled. "I cannot abide your existence any longer. My experiment has failed, for you have not demonstrated any sort of improvement in humanity."

Oh, was that why she made me? I cackled in utter incredulity. "Ah, yes. Killing me will certainly bring back those you have lost," I goaded. "Would it truly be a balm for your shriveled heart, I wonder? I would die, as good as nameless, without a friend in the world. And you would live... alone."

"Irrelevant," she said, leaning forward on her toes, quivering with the strain of holding herself in place.

"Precisely what part is irrelevant?" I asked.

"Your wishes. Your experiences. Essentially, you." She squeezed her eyes shut, as though trying to hide from her own words.

"Indeed?" I wanted to... something. Scream, maybe. Rip her filthy tongue from her mouth and stomp it to a bloody pulp, more effectively. Instead, I curled in upon myself, my arms crossed protectively over my narrow chest. "How very harsh. I might even go so far as to say 'cruel'."

"I." She spoke through gritted teeth, each syllable punctuated with a jerky step forward. "Do. Not. Care."

"Do you presume that I will simply allow you to kill me?" I laughed coldly. "Oh darling, existence is all I have. Why should I give it up for you, my creator, who has shirked all responsibility?"

She came to a halt. "Voldemort," she murmured, surprising us both.

It sounded like some malevolent incantation. "What nonsense do you speak?" I queried.

"Voldemort," she repeated. "Your name. 'Flight from Death'. Oh yes," she purred. "It will certainly be death you flee, but it isn't to life you run."

"Death dogs your every step. What would you know of life?" I hissed. 

She cringed deliciously. "A far sight more than you," she snapped. "But now, at least, you do not have to die nameless."

"Hmm," I said. The name (almost-name?) whispered through my thoughts, tasting of dank, dark places and the forever-cold of the alpine glaciers—those heaving, restless remnants of a frozen world long thawed. In short, it fit me with a painful, grasping finality. "It will do," I grudgingly allowed.

"Of course," she replied with a toss of her head. "I know you better than you know yourself."

"I am far more than what you made and what you see."

"Soon you shan't be more than a memory," she retorted, "so none of this will matter."

"I? A memory?" I snorted derisively. "You would soon forget me. No, it is you that shan't be more than a memory, and a foul one at that."

We leapt simultaneously. It was a primal dance, the sort only the desperate engage in these days, with lunges and cries, bared teeth and flying fists. She ducked beneath my blows and brandished her signature blade, but I was at once swifter and wilder than she—a progression and regression in one.

She never stood a chance.

I caught her about the waist and threw her onto her back, her head bouncing as she hit the ground. I plucked the knife from her fingers and tossed it aside; she had failed to lay even a shallow cut upon me. I would end her life the way I had so many others, with my hands about her throat.

She lay there, waiting, her fey face open, utterly resigned. "Do what you will," she croaked. "I cannot win against you. I will take my just reward."

I knelt beside her, my hands raised. I lowered them to her throat, then lifted them again. I imagined the feel of her soft skin beneath my hands, the ease with which I would wrap them around her neck, my long fingers overlapping easily. I imagined the satisfying crack as I twisted. I imagined the light leaving those emerald eyes forever.

But imagining did not make it so.

I tore the bandage away from my mark. It was healing well but would clearly scar. Fascinated—arrested, I caressed it with a gentle finger. She sucked in a pained breath through her teeth.

I looked down into her eyes to regain my resolve. They were... empty. There was no more taunting, no more arrogant gleam. She truly did not care anymore what happened to her. Perhaps she never had.

"Not my daughter, you bitch!" Quick footsteps. A woman's shriek.

Abigail's eyes sparked back to life, and she pushed my unresisting form away from her and stood. I landed in a curled heap. "No, Molly!" she cried. "This isn't quite as it appears."

Her adoptive mother skidded to a halt, a carving knife clenched in her hand, her ginger hair tangled with twigs. "That—thing killed my children," she panted. "It was about to kill you!"

"She was doing only what my actions led her to do," Abigail replied. "Nothing is her fault."

I could have run while they spoke, could have disappeared into the forest and never faced my creator again. But I was rooted to the spot, confused at the words emerging from her mouth. She was... defending me...

"What—" Molly sputtered. "What do you mean?"

"She is my creation, who I abandoned. It is because of my folly that Ginny and Ron and Hermione are dead. I take all responsibility for their murders."

Molly was slack-jawed, her eyes flicking between Abigail and me. "And you didn't think to tell anyone, or to do something about her?" she asked in a broken whisper.

Abigail considered her, then said, "I have never been one to think things through, I'm afraid."

"I've raised you as my own daughter, and this is how you repay me?" Molly was openly crying now, her face red and splotchy, her knife-free hand clutching her chest.

"Yes." Abigail could have been apologetic, but her guilt apparently wouldn't allow it.

With a heaving sob, Molly threw her knife, which came sailing toward Abigail with terrible certainty. Without waiting to see if it found its mark, she turned and ran back the way she'd come.

Everything slowed to a snail's crawl. The knife was approaching, and Abigail just stood there, waiting for it to reach her. "No," I heard myself rasp, and I dragged her down on top of me. She fell heavily into my lap, the knife missing her by a hair's breadth and sticking in the trunk of a birch, quivering.

"Let me go," she managed to hiss through startled pants, not attempting to struggle free from my—

My arms had wrapped about her tightly, and I did not recall doing it—thinking only that she must not die. Her life belonged to me and me alone.

I let my arms drop, leaning backward to rest my weight on my palms. She did not move to get off me.

"Thank you," she muttered. "You've saved— That is to say— Thank you." Her voice clawed out of some deep crevasse in her chest.

With her grudging gratitude and near-fatal defense singing in my ears, I thought with strange peace that I could make a concession of my own. "Before I came here," I said after a moment of uncomfortable silence, "I made a vow of vengeance, as I am sure you remember."

"Yes."

"Murder was my chosen means. I suppose it didn't have to be so... that there were other ways through which my vengeance could have been achieved."

"Yes," she repeated, with the same inflection as before.

"If you are hoping for a proper apology from me for the deaths of your loved ones," I went on, "then you will be disappointed. I do not regret what has happened here and would rather not be insincere." Nor would I admit vulnerability, thus the faint twinge of shame over Ronald would remain unspoken.

She smiled grimly. "I have a host of regrets. Oddly, making you is not one of them."

"Ah." I pushed her gently off my legs and sat facing her. "What do you regret, then?"

"Being abandoned—although my mother had no say and my father was too in love, then abandoning you in turn." She refused to meet my eyes and buried her face in her hands.

"Tell me about your mother," I said, certain she would tell me anything, now in her moment of greatest weakness.

"There is nothing to tell. She died in childbirth, as many women do."

I smiled, a vicious sort of smile that showed all my softly-pointed teeth. "She couldn't live for you, and since she is dead, you have no idea what she wanted—for you, for your future. Do you never think of her? Do you ever wonder where you would be now if she had survived?"

"It is not worth considering," she sighed. "I am here, as are you."

"Well, obviously."

"Though I suppose... Molly's reaction is similar to what hers might have been... I don't know... Perhaps I would have lost her, too, even though I was her natural-born child." She looked determinedly away from me, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.

I reached forward and tilted her chin upward with a tentative touch. Tears sparkled on her cheeks. I kissed the spots where they fell and drew her close, reveling in the warmth of her body.

"You do not wish to live, but I want you to," I said.

"For you," she clarified darkly.

"Indeed. Conversely, I have nothing but you to live for."

This brought a miniscule smirk to her mouth. "Naturally."

"Let us, then, make a world for two. We can go anywhere, masquerade as whatever we wish. It may be a hell, but it will be our hell'' or our heaven. What does it really matter?"

"Fine," she murmured. "It isn't as if I can stay here anyway."

"Are your affairs in order?" I asked.

"As much as they'll ever be," she sighed. "I cannot return to the Burrow, so I must be satisfied with what I have."

"Time to go," I concluded. "We don't want to be found here by the time they think to send someone to look for us."

She nodded.

We walked away from Ottery St. Catchpole together, as I had hoped we would. My hood was drawn close about my face. She cut her hair close about her neck. No one would question us.

Yes, she came away with me, but it was still so very far from what I hoped for. What did I hope for? Even I do not know.

Some nights, we slept under the stars, curled together so closely that it was not always clear where she ended and I began. She warmed me to the bone; that alone was reason enough to never let her go.

One night, when it rained, we spent the night in a hayloft. "Let me pleasure you, to take our minds off this miserable storm," I suggested.

"Do as you wish," she said.

I tasted her, and I found her good.

"Voldemort," she moaned. My almost-name.

We re-entered society, after that. Days were spent taking dictation from an eager old man named Slughorn, who paid Abigail very well indeed to help him compose his memoirs of brushing shoulders with society's elites. Nights were spent in wild—though quiet—coitus.

"Your pleasure and pain belong to me," I would whisper against her skin.

"Every part of you belongs to me," she would invariably return.

*

We travel now, never staying in one place for long. We spent months moving across the Arctic after Slughorn finished his memoirs, sometimes apart, usually together. We met intrepid explorers there, who never understood what we were.

When the Arctic became too dreary, we returned south and booked passage on a ship across the Atlantic. The fledging United States was large and varied in its sights and locales, and we lost ourselves there for a decade.

Now, we are to sail the Pacific, to find refuge on any island that will have us. I look forward to it. Perhaps the cold will never reach me there.

I hate her. She hates me. But she gives me warmth, and I give her meaning.

"Do you regret?" I ask, knowing the answer. It hasn't changed.

"Every day," she whispers, her lips brushing mine. "Never," she adds, her fingers tangling painfully in my perpetually snarled hair.

"Good," I hiss.

This is enough. It must always be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allusions to _Dr. Faustus_ by Christopher Marlowe and _The Master and Margarita_ by Mikhail Bulgakov. The latter's definitely anachronistic, but I couldn't resist.

**Author's Note:**

> Abigail is a filthy liar, and only Voldemort understands their literary significance.
> 
> Thoughts? And if your main reaction is "I have no idea what the fuck I just read," then please let me know.


End file.
